


A Chill of Nothing

by akira101



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 08:38:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2725868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akira101/pseuds/akira101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something strange happened to Carmilla when she was down in the pit. A connection was formed between her and the evil, and Laura must deal with the repercussions. Post-finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Chill of Nothing

A strangled cry pulls Laura from sleep. She throws off her covers and jumps out of bed, falling to her knees beside Carmilla’s bed. Carmilla trembles, her eyes screwed shut in sleep, and a whimper falls from her mouth that skewers Laura like a shard of ice. Carmilla doesn’t whimper. She grunts and growls and generally bemoans anyone’s existence except Laura’s, and she is strong.

 _Please, you stupid vampire_ , Laura thinks. _You’re not_ this _._

Avoiding a flailing arm, she grabs Carmilla’s shoulders and shakes her hard. “Wake up, Carmilla. You’re just dreaming.”

Carmilla struggles against her hold and Laura lets go. Two weeks of _this_ and she knows better than to try to hold down a vampire caught in a nightmare. Shouting is what she resorts to but so far that hasn’t worked too well, either. It’s almost like Carmilla is caught in less of a dream than some kind of possession; a possession that at some morbid hour of night takes hold of her mind, paralyses her will but not her thrashing body, and fixes her in its grasp until the dream – the nightmare – _it_ – has run its course.

Surrounded by a world full of weird, Laura isn’t exactly unfamiliar with feeling useless. But this – watching Carmilla gasp and shake and cry – it’s a feeling she hasn’t really felt before. Before now, she probably hasn’t cared enough to.

“Carmilla!” Laura tries again to catch Carmilla’s arms but each time she does, Carmilla pulls herself free. It’s pointless, she knows. Carmilla is a tidal wave of strength, and Laura may as well be a strand of seaweed caught up in her turbulence. If Carmilla pulls, she gets pulled. If Carmilla pushes…

 _No,_ Laura thinks. _I have to push back harder._

She grits her teeth and climbs onto the bed, covering Carmilla’s thrashing body with her own. Jabs of pain flair across her body – a knee to her thigh, a fist to her side – but Laura just pulls herself closer until no space subsists between them, and instead of being hit she just trembles with Carmilla.

She buries her face into the neck beneath her. Tears sting at her eyes. _Let go of her. Please, whatever you are, just let her go._

Then, for the first time since the nightmares began, Carmilla speaks.

“No. Please, please, no.”

It’s a low and guttural sound, the shaking breath of it cold against Laura’s cheek. Laura squeezes her eyes shut. She feels nauseous, not from the violent way her body lurches and jerks with Carmilla’s, but the wrenching sound of that whisper, quiet and somehow so, so alone.

“Please,” Laura says, fighting to keep her position on top of Carmilla. “Please, just–”

An elbow catches her stomach and the words are ripped from her throat. Winded, she gasps for air and for a moment nothing comes. _Please don’t wake up now._ But as luck would have it Carmilla does, and in the hazy lack of oxygen Laura can’t focus on the panicked eyes beneath her or the still shaking hands that cup her face.

“Laura, no,” Carmilla rushes. “Please, no, what did I do?”

Laura still gasps for breath but manages to slap her hand over Carmilla’s mouth. A minute passes as the storm abates. Carmilla has stopped quivering, but her arms still surround Laura in a fast embrace. Breathing steadily, Laura focuses on the brown eyes beneath her. The apology written there is plain, and before Carmilla can get out a word Laura leans down and kisses her. Soft. Comforting. Uncomplicated.

She pulls back. “What have I told you about mopey, self-admonishing vampires? Edward Cullen? _So_ not attractive.”

Carmilla smiles but it’s short-lived, a glowing ember that flared and died. Laura sighs and sits back, pulling Carmilla to sit upright with her. Their fingers thread together on the yellow pillow between them – the one Laura had stolen for the brief few days they had thought Carmilla was dead.

“Anything new this time?” Laura asks.

Carmilla hesitates.

“Please,” Laura says. “If these dreams have anything to do with the aftershocks, with what feeding your mother to that super dark evil force _thing_ might have done, then you have to tell me.”

Carmilla nods and takes a deep breath, her eyes glazed over. “Every night before now it’s just been me, stuck at the bottom of the pit, surrounded by this…blackness. I can never see its form but I can feel it, probing at my mind and my thoughts until it’s like I’m not even me anymore. I’m just this…killer. A mindless, thirsty killer. But tonight was different. Tonight it wasn’t me stuck down there in that hell. It was you.”

Laura keeps quiet, squeezing Carmilla’s hands as she continues.

“You were down there, buried somewhere in the darkness, and I could hear your voice in my head begging me for help. But it was like my feet were fixed to the lip of the pit and I couldn’t jump in there after you. I couldn’t…”

Carmilla falls silent and drops her head, black hair matted with sweat falling around her face. Laura pushes it back and coaxes Carmilla’s downcast face back up. For a second the moonlight flooding the room from the window behind Laura’s desk brightens, and her stomach twists at the sight of Carmilla. Heavy, dark circles sit beneath her eyes, and even though she drank the evening before her lips are drained of colour, almost white. _God. She looks so tired. What are these dreams doing to her?_ Then the moon slips back behind a cloud, the light disappears, and again they sit in shadow.

Laura leans forward, resting her head against Carmilla’s. “Are you okay?”

Carmilla huffs a silent laugh. “Peachy as ever.”

“Honestly?”

Carmilla presses their lips together. “You’re here, with me, so I’m fine. Now get back to your own bed.”

Laura frowns. Ever since the dreams began Carmilla hasn’t let them sleep in the same bed. Carmilla is scared, understandably so, that she will end up hurting Laura in one of her nightmare fits, but Laura is starting to care less and less about her personal safety. Carmilla will never seriously hurt her, and it is getting _seriously_ harder to sleep their usual five feet apart. _Not that I want to do…anything_ , Laura thinks. _It would just be nice if she didn’t treat me like some delicate, glass sculpture she was about to smash to pieces with her pinkie._

“Can I sleep here tonight?” Laura asks.

Carmilla drops their hands. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not? The worst that could happen is you dream again and I get a tiny little bit hurt trying to wake you. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the two steps between our beds haven’t exactly stopped me from trying that every other night.”

Carmilla doesn’t reply at first, just scoots back and furthers the distance between them. “That’s not the worst that could happen.”

“Okay then,” Laura says, not budging from her spot on the bed. “What _is_ the worst that could happen?”

Carmilla rolls her eyes, and then in an altogether contrary gesture hugs her knees to her chest. “These dreams…they aren’t just dreams. The evil – whatever it is – has complete control of me when I’m asleep, and when I’m awake…I don’t know, Laura. I feel like I’m slipping. Like I’m more vampire than I am me. And I’ve noticed small things, small changes, like being thirstier than I’ve been in a hundred years, like itching for a hunt even though I haven’t done that for longer. Like…”

“Like what?”

Carmilla drops her eyes. “…like wanting you, more than it’s safe for me to.”

Something tugs deep in Laura’s stomach. “Oh…” She trails off into silence and the confession hangs heavy in the air. _Well, that’s…not what I was expecting. Also, given the impending doom surrounding this conversation, I should probably be less pleased about hearing that._

“And now I’ve made you uncomfortable,” Carmilla says, standing up from the bed.

Laura grabs her hand and pulls her back down. “Uncomfortable? I’m not uncomfortable. An incredibly strong, enigmatic, sexy vampire who wears leather pants like they’re pyjamas just said she wanted me, so if I’m uncomfortable it’s not because I’m uncomfortable.”

Carmilla frowns. “Say again?”

Laura waves away the question. “Listen, I know you’re scared of hurting me but–”

A sudden rumble, deep like a huge, stirring beast, shakes the room and Laura grabs for Carmilla. Items thud and crash to the floor – textbooks, a journal, the owl lamp perched on Laura’s headboard – and beneath the two of them the bed seems to vibrate. _These are getting worse_ , Laura thinks. Pulsing shocks climb up her spine and her skin prickles. It’s cold, unnaturally so, as if an invisible, icy fog has blanketed the room. For one breath, two, the air Laura exhales is a cloudy, white mist until gradually it fades, the growling beast subsides and the room is still once more. _That was weird…er than usual._

“We should really get to sleep.”

Laura’s head snaps up. “What? Why?”

Carmilla ignores her, but as she lifts her legs to slide them beneath the covers Laura notices something. Blood. Not a lot of it, just four red, crescent lines bitten into the inside of Carmilla’s thigh. Even in the dim moonlight, the blood glistens.

“You’re bleeding,” Laura says.

“It’s nothing.”

Laura takes Carmilla’s hand and examines the red beneath her fingernails. “Why did you…what made you…”

Carmilla sighs, doesn’t respond, and in silence Laura waits. Patience, she has learnt over the last three weeks, is a necessary virtue when dealing with a vampire who has spent three centuries under the controlling thumb of her souped-up VampMom, sharing nothing of herself with anyone.

“Control,” Carmilla eventually says. “The tremors are affecting me the same way the dreams are. The ground rumbles but it doesn’t feel like an earthquake to me. It feels…like a command, almost. Like it wants something from me. I don’t remember what happened down in that pit but I feel somehow connected to this thing now. And when it calls I have to hold on to stop myself from slipping.”

The silence returns and Laura, unlikely as it is, has no words with which to fill it. So instead she reaches out and touches Carmilla, feels the bottled strain of a pale, clenched jaw, a quiet hysteria in the fists she cradles. The back of her fingers stroke Carmilla’s arm, and the hard muscles beneath her touch are taut like a bowstring. _Like a giant black cat, ready to pounce._

“Hey,” Laura says, poking Carmilla’s side. “It took me months to stop being a total idiot and realise that you actually liked me back. I’m not about to let you slip away from me now.”

Carmilla pats her hand; the tension in her frame diffused some. “No offense, Cupcake, but if the state of my free will comes down to a tug o’ war match between you and an ancient, Sumerian evil, my hopes are not high.”

Laura laughs, then softly head-butts Carmilla’s shoulder. “You know it wouldn’t just be me, right? All of us are in your corner now. LaF and Perry and Danny – who actually likes you way more than she wants to admit – and Kirsch and his Zeta bros who, you know, _weren’t_ vampire spies for your mom. Even the Summer Society said we can count on them if any freakiness comes back to campus.”

Laura pauses, the studded bracelets tied around Carmilla’s wrist clinking as she fiddles with them. Reaching out, Laura calms the restless motion and dips her head into Carmilla’s line of sight.

“From what little you’ve told me about your past I know you must have been incredibly alone. But you have people now, Carmilla. People who care about you.”

Carmilla looks at her, equally touched and unconvinced. “Maybe,” she concedes. “But this is real evil we’re talking about here, not just vampires or fairies or–”

“Wait a second, fairies are–”

“ _My point is_ ,” Carmilla says, “even if every student enrolled at Silas wanted in for whatever the hell is coming, we still might not stand a chance. We need to be prepared for that, _and_ we need to be prepared for the possibility that I might not be fighting with you, but against–”

The earth rumbles, more violent than before, a beast no longer stirring but wide awake and enraged, and with a strangled sound exactly like the one that earlier pulled Laura from sleep, Carmilla fists her hair and cries. Her eyes, Laura can see, are black as coal.

“Carmilla?”

No response. Carmilla just trembles, one hand clenching the bed sheets so brutally they rip, her body convulsing in spasm after spasm as if something inside of her is screaming, echoing the tremor.

Laura grabs Carmilla’s arm. “Look at me, Carmilla!”

But the black eyes in front of her aren’t Carmilla’s at all, and unlike the dozens of times before now the aftershock doesn’t peter or wane. It builds. The roar gets louder. A mug shatters on the floor behind Laura, her desk chair falls but somehow, between that and the panicked shouts of students outside, she hears a small, strained whisper.  

“Laura.”

 _Thank god!_ Laura holds the back of Carmilla’s neck; the muscles there seizing and jumping. “I’m here, Carmilla. I’m here.”

Carmilla groans, her eyes clenched shut, like she’s trying to get out words but can’t. A battle is raging inside of her – Carmilla’s will against the monster’s – and every instinct Laura has is telling her to run, to get out of here, because if Carmilla loses…

_I can’t just leave her._

“ _Please_ ,” Laura begs. A tear tracks an icy path down her cheek. “Please stay here with me.”

Carmilla’s head jerks up toward the ceiling and somehow, though there are no open windows in the room, no possible source of wind, the air itself seems to quake. Then a bright white light erupts, emanating from Carmilla like she herself is the sun and Laura knows, in an instant, that the battle is about to be over.

_No. I won’t lose you again._

Surging forward, she grabs Carmilla’s hair, stares for a second into the hollow, black pits of her eyes, and with the stark understanding that what she is about to do is hopeless, kisses her.

Loud and angry is the roar that follows. Laura feels herself thrown off balance by the wind, powerful in its aseity, and it takes all of her strength to keep herself connected with Carmilla. Their dormitory door rattles against the lock, pounded by the furious fists of the storm inside the room. _Please, just kiss me back already._ The rumble swells into thunder, a rolling crash of it that smells like rain and earth and pulsates through the air. Down through her skin Laura feels it seep, drilling deep into her bones until every cell inside of her, from spine to thrumming lips, seems to vibrate.

A speck of darkness finds her.

She gasps into the kiss and almost reels back. It was coldness like she had never felt before. Or a void, maybe; a chill of nothing. The feeling had only brushed her like a shiver, but it was as if through their connection a piece of the evil Carmilla fought with had grazed her, too. _Oh god, Carmilla…how are you still fighting?_

Then finally, unexpectedly, Laura feels it, an almost indiscernible twitch of Carmilla’s lips, and the light explodes.

Torn from Carmilla, Laura flies backwards. Her head hits the wall at the foot of the bed and though she is still conscious shadow engulfs her. The light is gone and the thunder, too; all sound muted as if she were deep underwater. A hand cradles the back of her head, and it isn’t hers. She looks up at warm, brown eyes.

“That was really stupid of you,” Carmilla says.

Laura winces.

With a shaky breath, Carmilla touches her cheek. “Thank you.”

Laura sits up from the wall, her head thumping a dull beat, then reaches over to her desk and flicks on a lamp. Moonlight, even in a place like Silas where it shines eerily bright, isn’t enough to see if Carmilla is okay.

“Are you alright?” she asks, running her hands over Carmilla, checking for injuries.

“I’m fine,” Carmilla says. “Exhausted and a little worse for wear, but fine.”

Laura nods. Outside the chaos is dying down, doors clicking closed as students retreat to their dorms. _Just another night at Silas University, I guess._ She glances around the room at the mess covering the floor and sighs. “And just when I had convinced you to use the chore wheel.”

Carmilla laughs, then slips beneath the covers of the bed. “I’m telling you, the room _wants_ to be messy. You have to accept it.”

Laura shakes her head and smiles. Beneath the gravity of the night and her dull headache, however, it disappears. “Should we talk about what just happened?”

“If it’s okay with you I might hit it,” Carmilla says. “Fighting internal battles with evil forces is apparently just as tiring as fighting real ones.”

Laura nods. “Sure. We’ll talk in the morning,” She kisses Carmilla’s cheek and stands, flicking off the lamp as she heads back to her own bed.

“Laura, wait.”

“Yeah?”

Carmilla hesitates, then flips back the covers and shuffles closer to the wall. Warmth spreads through Laura at the unspoken invitation and she takes a calming breath. _Taper your excitement, Hollis. No need to embarrass yourself._

“Are you sure?” she asks.

Carmilla nods. “Before tonight, I thought I was protecting you by making you sleep alone, but I would probably be slave to some grand evil puppet master right now if it wasn’t for you. I don’t ever want to think about what could have happened to you if I had slipped, so maybe in order to protect you from me, I might need you to protect me, too.”

Laura squeals, a giddy burst of happiness she can’t contain, and Carmilla rolls her eyes.

“Just get in the bed.”

Laura does, and after a few moments of settling down against one another, once Carmilla’s arms are warm and soft around her, she lets herself relax. She catches the familiar trace of leather and wood – the same one she was determined to despise when first they met – and it strikes her not for the first time how incredibly things have changed since then. How incredibly, too, they might still have to change.

“You know what tonight means, right?” she says.

“That I’ll never get this bed to myself again?”

Laura smiles. “No, it means that we actually stand a chance against this thing. I mean, I know that we’re all just a bunch of college kids treading water in an ocean way too deep for us, and that we only have one supernatural being on our side against something that’s – no offense – apparently way more powerful, but if just you and I alone can win one battle, maybe that means all of us together can win the war.”

“That sounds…dramatic.”

“Hey,” Laura says, laughing. “I’m just saying I think we can do this.”

Carmilla pauses, then kisses the top of her head. “I think we can too.”             

Laura smiles again and closes her eyes. Those words, coming from Carmilla who wears pessimism like a point of pride, are all the comfort she needs to feel, for tonight at the very least, undaunted and at peace.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, guys. As always, any and all comments are welcome, especially constructive criticism. I'm doing this really stupid thing at the moment called "trying to write the first draft of a novel", so any helpful pointers that can make me better are appreciated. 
> 
> This is my tumblr. Send prompts if you like. http://akira107.tumblr.com/


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